The Chess Set Rehabilitation
by Master Of All Imagination
Summary: With the aid of a chess set, doctorly perseverance, and the care of a friend, Watson helps Holmes break his cocaine addiction. A sick!Holmes prompt for Hiding.in.the. cookie.jar
1. The Black Queen

**A/N: I've been absent from this fandom for so long... it's good to be back, though. I have written this story as a prompt exchange with my good friend ..jar, and I sincerely hope she likes it! She deserves it. :) The chess bit is some head-canon-izing on my part, I don't think ACD ever mentioned either Holmes or Watson as being chess players. But perhaps I am spoiling it. And now... read and enjoy, and especially review!**

It was a dark evening, the lamplighters having came around and compled their duties a full hour earlier owing to the profuse cloud cover overhead. Sherlock Holmes was sprawled in his armchair, the perfect alter ego of the friend I have come to know and love. Caseless, bored and brooding, I knew he was on the very cusp of reaching towards the mantle piece for his seven per-cent solution. I had lived in absolute dread of it for the past two hours.

I had tried, on two previous occasions, by in turn asking, persuading, reasoning, pleading, and then begging my friend to refrain from the self-poisoning habits of his cocaine addiction. Yet here we were, his addiction no less keen and his need no less pronounced.

As I brooded, my fear was realized as Holmes rose languidly from his armchair and reached for the bottle. In a fit of desperation I too rose and caught his hand by the wrist. Holmes regarded me with a mixture of shock and disapproval.

"My dear Watson, surely you are not intending to rehash our old arguments against my vice?"

"That was not my intention, Holmes," I explained, buying time.

"Then shall you please release my wrist?" He asked, again perfectly calm. I did so, but immediately moved in front of the mantle piece, obscuring the bottle.

"Holmes," I said, to forestall his objections, "tonight, surely, you can forgo the bottle for once?"

"And what else shall fill my monotony?" Holmes asked me, using his best asset- reason- against me. I thought for a short moment, my mind racing, and then came up with an idea.

"You seek the cocaine as an intellectual stimulant, no?" I asked him. He nodded. "And if you were to find another intellectual stimulant to replace it, you would no longer resort to it?"

"My dear Watson, if you are insinuating that my vice is an addiction, I fairly resent it. I can relinquish it whenever I like; but I choose to use it now." Though I had no doubt Holmes's iron will would allow him to quit cocaine when and if he chose, I also knew, as a doctor, it would cause him considerable pain. And so it was that night that I chose sooner, rather than later, to put him through that ordeal by fire.

"Then I am offering you an alternative intellectual stimulation." Holmes raised one eyebrow in a silent question. It was obvious I had aroused his interest, and I smiled faintly at the fact. For now, the bottle was forgotten. I ducked quickly into my rooms and returned, my smile a bit more pronounced, holding a small wooden box. I set it down on the small coffee table between our two armchairs and removed the cover with a flourish.

"Chess?" Holmes announced, the faint hint of a question seeming to ask if I was out of my mind. Perhaps my smile faltered for half a moment, but nevertheless I persevered with my idea.

"Yes, Holmes. Chess. I have no doubt you play?"

"You are correct, Watson. In my youth I was quite avid, in fact. But forgive me for saying, old boy, but have you such confidence in your own skill that you hope to offer me a challenge?" Holmes's callousness stung me.

"In fact, during the war I also was an avid player. It was a good way to while away the time among me and my fellow soldiers. By the time I was injured, we were all fair players." I sense Holmes's interest waning, and added, "Do you accept my challenge?" He favored me with a small smile and leaned forward to grab the black queen.

"Indeed, Watson. I hope you don't mind if I take the liberty of being black?"

"Not at all, my friend." I sat back and silently cheered at my small victory. One night without Holmes resorting to cocaine was worthy of it.

Shortly we had the board set up, and Holmes made the first move.

There followed a game of chess unlike any other I had ever played with my fellow soldiers behind any enemy lines. Holmes was indeed an accomplished player, and it took all my skill to offer him the distraction needed to keep him away from the temptation lying in wait on the mantle-piece. Holmes won, which I had expected from the beginning, but it took well over an hour for him to achieve this. As we put the board away and prepared to retire for the night, I saw him cast one long look of appraisal over his shoulder at me, which I caught and returned with a somewhat self-satisfied smile. It seemed chess was a very good intellectual distraction, and as I fell to sleep that night I had hopes it would prove to continue to be for as long as it took me to break my friend of his self-denied cocaine addiction.

**A/N: Now that school has started up again I cannot guarantee any sort of reliable timetable for updates. But for the sake of my friend, I shall try to have this done in under a week and in no longer than a month, for I've already lingered over it too long. Also, if anyone has ever read a cocaine-rehab fic in the SH fandom, can you please point it out to me? I want to make sure this is original and as canon as possible.**


	2. The White Knight Falls From His Horse

To my immense relief, the next day brought a distraught husband to our door in a desperate search for his wife, and another case to occupy Holmes's brilliant mind and drive away all thought or need of cocaine. In the excitement of it, even I found my thoughts of it dwindling, and the chess set remained tucked away in a cabinet. In any case, I had calculated that if Holmes could be persuaded off his vice for two months, the withdrawal symptoms would be over and his addiction, if not his cravings, cured.

I had started a calendar in my journal listing his days spent free of the needle. The case took him five days, and one afterwards during which he pondered its outcome, and adding the dark night when we played our first chess game he had been one week without the drug. It was a good start, and though I had held high hopes it should continue that way, I was doomed to be disappointed.

The next night I was called away to a carriage accident down the street, and in going I left Holmes alone. When I returned, it was to find a much more horrific spectacle than the wreckage of the carriage waiting in the sitting room: Holmes, dead to the world in the grip of cocaine. I did not so much set down my medical bag as fling it into a corner, and in my frustration fairly ripped my coat at the seams shrugging it off. Holmes was startled semi-comatose by my actions and looked up groggily.

"I trust you handled the emergency… ably, my friend?"

"Yes, Holmes," I replied with venom. "I see _you _have taken full advantage of my absence." Holmes looked sharply at me, no amount of cocaine ever able to dull his skills of observation. My accusation hung in the air between us, unspoken but fully felt.

"Nonsense, Watson. The hour being late and my boredom becoming all-encompassing due to your absence, I merely remedied my situation."

"And could you not have waited until my return?"

"I had no idea when you would be back-"

"It is no excuse, Holmes!" I cried. His stare returned, and I felt hotly the inappropriateness of my sudden outburst. "What I meant is, what I mean…" Suddenly I was cowed by the difficulty of the situation I was in. "I had thought you were doing so well…" I said quietly. Holmes leaned across and patted me on the arm.

"Take heart, Watson. There is nothing that I was doing well in to begin with that you must be disappointed in me for failing." I shook my head, amazed at the continued denial of his addiction.

"If that is what you believe, my dear friend," I mumbled sadly, unable to meet his gaze. I stood, the hour already being late, and announced that I was retiring. Holmes took no more notice of me as he let the drug reassert itself in his system and I climbed the stairs to my room. When I got there I sat at my desk, and with a heavy heart crossed out all the days I had recorded Holmes as clean of cocaine, and reset the total to a small "0" in the corner.

**A/N: A short chapter, but more to come soon, I promise! **


	3. The Sacrifice of a Pawn

**A/N: Alright- the third chapter, FINALLY! Sorry for the wait. This was supposed to be up yesterday, but I was on vacation and House was on and I was obsessing over Warehouse 13 and… yeah. Also, BTW, I made a small mistake in the first chapter by saying that Holmes, as the black pieces, moved first. To any chess players reading this, it is in fact white which moves first. Excuse my mistake, but I won't be changing it because it is slightly symbolic to my story. So assume that in the universe of Sherlock Holmes black moves first! :D**

The next day I lived in an agony of suspense, wondering when I would be called upon to interfere between Holmes and his vice. It was around dinnertime that I saw the telltale movement towards the mantle.

"Holmes." I stopped him with the pleading tone of my voice.

"Yes, Watson?"

"Please, Holmes. Not again." He merely nodded and sat back again.

"To the chessboard, then?" I smiled with relief and fetched it. I played a decent game, but all the while the one thought that haunted me was: How long would I be able to keep this up? How long before the effects of cocaine withdrawal would take over my friend? How long before he would become paranoid, exhausted, anxious, irritable, tired and insomniatic? I sighed and made my next move, prodding a pawn forward. My plan to surround his king with an army of pawns was currently failing; Holmes had detected it and was picking them off one by one, somehow also managing to clear a path to my own king for his queen to exploit.

I experience a small "aha!" moment when I registered a gap in his defenses. My last pawn was blocking my bishop from entering Holmes into check. If I moved the pawn forward a square- I reached out and did it like so- then Holmes would be forced to take it with his knight to remove his queen from danger. As he removed the sacrificed pawn from the board I triumphantly moved my bishop into place and announced "check" satisfactorily.

"A cunning move, my friend," Holmes declared, pondering the board with his fingers interlaced below his chin. "Yet not cunning enough." Then, with one fell swoop, a castle I had not seen took my bishop and rendered my last pawn's sacrifice useless. He won two moves later, and I was not sore for the loss, because his eyes held at least a fraction of the light he normally kindled when on a case, and I knew that at least for that night, I could mark down a new tally in my journal.

* * *

><p>We continued like this for six nights, until his days clean once again made up a week. I could see that each time he denied himself the needle it did not make his will stronger, as I had hoped, but merely broke him more. I think he finally began to realize an inkling of his addiction. I knew how repulsive the thought was to him that such a thing, once a mere servant of his will, had become his master. He sensed his own dependence upon it and hated both himself and the bottle for it.<p>

The longer he went without cocaine the worse his playing became. His mind was distracted constantly by the absence of the drug in his system, and I knew his brain was screaming for more. I like to think that it was my interference and repeated insistence that he return to the chessboard that kept him focused, but at that point, it was his own iron will which fought the battle.

On the eighth day, his poor performance in our nightly game of chess was even more pronounced. I had captured half his pieces and he only a couple of my own white pieces. His eyes flicked restlessly from the board to the fireplace. I watched each movement both with a doctor's curiosity and a friend's fear. Soon his movements reached the point where he paid the game no heed, and my gentle repeats of his name produced no effect.

All of a sudden his body succumbed to the movement of his eyes and he bounded up from his chair to snatch the much coveted bottle from the mantelpiece. I stood as well, and we faced each other over the chessboard, as if squaring up for a duel. In his eyes I saw his guilt clearly written as he held the bottle protectively against his chest like a drowning man holds a life preserver.

"Can you admit it now, Holmes?" I asked him, trying to keep any tones of reproach out of my voice. "Can you admit your addiction?" He stared at me with hollow, defiant eyes.

"Nonsense. I do not need this… do not need…" he trailed off, surveying the thing in his hand like a botanist would a curious specimen.

"Then give it to me," I said quietly, holding out a hand for it. "The first step to recovery is acknowledgement, Holmes. So admit it. Admit you have an addiction, and I will do all I can to help you break it."

He gripped the bottle in his hand, so tightly I thought he'd break it, and he squeezed his eyes shut and would not return my gaze. My outstretched hand stayed empty for innumerable minutes, and finally I thought even his unbreakable will would falter and betray him. Yet my patience was finally rewarded as he dropped the bottle wordlessly to the carpet and covered his face with his hands, leaning forward in his armchair with his elbows on his knees, breathing slowly. When he looked back up at me desperation shone clear in his eyes.

"I have done my utmost to resist the pull of it," Holmes said, after taking a deep breath. I picked it up off the floor to prevent further temptation. "But," he continued, "It seems my utmost is not enough. You say you can help me, Watson. I am asking you to, as a patient to a doctor."

"And as a friend to a friend," I returned, meeting his eyes finally and seeing a grateful regard there, "I shall also do my utmost."

**A/N: All cocaine withdrawal symptoms were got off of Wikipedia. If they're inaccurate, I blame them! ;) Let's see… two more chapters to go! The next one will be heavy on the angst and H/C, so stay tuned!**


	4. The Game Intensifies

**A/N: The lateness of this chapter is unpardonable. It has been eating away at my mind for ages. So I finally dragged my a** in front of my computer screen, put on some awesome music, closed all my internet browsers and got to work. So now it's done. Finally. My most sincere apologies to everyone who was waiting for this on alerts, and most of all to Hiding. in the cookie jar. , who definitely didn't deserve to be kept waiting so long! Here it is. Prepare for angst. The H/C will come later, as I had to split this chapter up in order to be left with something publishable.**

I sent Holmes to bed immediately. He didn't object to my order. I realized that I was probably facing the most difficult case of my career: how to help my best friend quit a highly addictive drug, as they say, "cold turkey." Thoughtfully, I replaced the chess set and retired to my room. I took off my jacket and removed the cocaine bottle from within. As much as I would have liked to empty its contents down the basin, I hesitated, wary of a time that Holmes's body would need the drug to stop from shutting down completely. However, I could not have Holmes finding it and giving in to a fit of weakness. I dithered over it quite some time before settling for keeping it on my person. Holmes would not be able to access it even if he found it.

I awoke refreshed the next morning and rang for breakfast. I served it myself, fussing about in my most professional medical form, and not at all ashamed of it. Holmes had asked for my help, and I was going to give it.

"I am inexplicably weary, Watson," Holmes announced to me, breaking the silence of eating.

"I know, Holmes. It is the first symptom of your withdrawal." I paused. "Are you sure you want to do it this way, Holmes? I am sure I could wean you off the drug slowly. It would be safer, easier-"

"Never let it be said I am not a man up for the challenge," Holmes asserted. At my despairing expression, he relented. "I have resolved to see this through. It does me no good to prolong it." I nodded.

"Very well. At least let me inform you what you face." Holmes nodded, and I began to rattle off the symptoms. "You will become irritable, short tempered, tired, mildly schizophrenic, and incapable of resisting the drug's calls. Are you prepared for this, Holmes?"

"I have faced many worse mental trials, Watson. I have no doubt this one shall be duly conquered, as all the rest were, though perhaps with a bit more effort that usual." He gave me a brief smile. "In light of the behavioral changes to expect me to undergo, I would like to apologize in advance for the way I may inadvertently act towards you."

I allowed myself a brief grin at his thoughtfulness.

"Nonsense, old friend. I assure you, I shall not hold you accountable for anything."

We spoke hardly a word to one another the rest of the day. Holmes found repose most in sleep. Though his natural tendency to eschew rest had led me to believe he did not need it, in his weakened state sleep came easy and served to block out all his cravings. While he dozed, I would take up a book or my notepad and catch up on my reading and writing, every so often casting a glance over to him to make sure he still slept. I felt rather like a mother hen checking on her chick. I smiled at the thought, certain in the knowledge that Holmes would laugh scornfully were I ever to mention it. At the end of each day I adjusted the total in my journal. Three more days passed before the incident I now relate.

I went out around midday on the fourth day for such medicine as I thought I should require from my practice. I left without reluctance, for the cocaine bottle was stored safely in my breast coat pocket. In any case, Holmes had not removed himself from his armchair for the better part of the day.

When I opened the door to our rooms, my medical bag newly stuffed, a strange smell greeted my nose. Holmes was bent busily over his deal table, mixing a potent concoction with his back hunched keenly over his work. I smiled slightly at the new distraction his mind had found as I divested myself of my coat and hat. I asked him from across the room,

"What is it this time, Holmes?" He did not immediately answer me, as he held a test tube poised over another in intense concentration. I waited patiently as he tipped a purplish liquid into it. Suddenly the vials dropped from his hands and then, at his sudden cry of pain, I hurried to his side.

He had spilled the liquid over his hand, and it- some sort of acid- was burning into his skin. Holmes collapsed onto his stool and held his hand at arms length. I reached into my bag and drew out bandages and a burn ointment, but Holmes stayed my hand.

"No, Watson. Leave it be for-" he hissed in pain, breaking off his words. I stared at him in shock.

"Nonsense, Holmes! This must be treated! The pain must be… unbearable…" I trailed off, understanding dawning. The pain would be the ultimate distraction from the withdrawal symptoms he was experiencing.

As I bandaged his hands, I could not help notice that they were shaking. It was no wonder he had spilled the chemical. I wondered briefly whether it had been on purpose, but I quickly dismissed the idea: Holmes had little regard for his physical body, but enough respect for me to refrain from injuring himself needlessly when he knew the lengths I would go to to heal him again.

I was tempted to admonish him for his foolish attempt at pain management, but thought better of it. That was the last thing the man needed then. Once he had lowered himself uneasily into his armchair, I endeavored to provide an alternate means of distraction. I retrieved the wooden chess set from its shelf and set it up silently. Holmes knew what I was doing, but merely sat back with his eyes closed, his injured left hand resting in his lap. I turned the board so that the black pieces were closest to him, and we began.

We played in silence so loud it was almost a noise. Finally, I could not refrain from breaking it.

"Were your hands shaking as a result or as a cause?" I asked as nonchalantly as I could. Holmes trained his eyes on the board and took his move before responding.

"Early in the experiment I became unable to steady my hands. If that is what you are asking, then they were the cause." I shook my head.

"How could you have worked like that? You must have known the danger…"

"I knew nothing of the danger," Holmes snapped at me. "I knew only of the need for distraction, and so I continued my occupation." Immediately I transferred blame to myself for the situation. Perhaps if I had not gone out I could have noticed his symptoms and stopped him-

"It is no use blaming yourself, doctor," Holmes broke in. I smiled wearily; his ability for guessing my train of thought was well known to me. "Your need for supplies was unavoidable."

"Nevertheless," I announced, "I shall not be leaving you alone again for the duration of your… rehabilitation…" I said delicately. It was the first time either of us had directly referred to the process of breaking his addiction. Our eyes met. He held my gaze, and then nodded once.

"I think that would be best, Watson." If I were a mere acquaintance of Holmes's, I would have taken his words at face value. But we had been flat mates for years now, and I interpreted it as the unspoken thank you he was so desperate to convey. I cost him no lost dignity by not responding, and we continued on with our game, the silence less thick. Holmes was the one to claim checkmate, and to my surprise, he set up the board again as soon as we finished. I merely went along with it.

"Do you find me as much an unfitting opponent as you had once thought, Holmes?" I asked lightly.

"As a matter of fact, I do." I was slightly miffed at his response, so vastly different in tone from our last exchange, and I said,

"Come now, Holmes. I am surely not that bad. I did almost manage to beat you last night, after all." Holmes took his hand from the piece he was about to move and fixed me with a fierce glare.

"I would hardly count that. I was by no means in peak form last night. Your skills are mediocre at best, your strategy is weak and repetitive, and you take far too long when considering your next move. Overall, you are a very unsatisfactory chess companion. Can we now cease idle conversation and focus on the game at hand?" I daresay my mouth hung slightly open at Holmes's sudden descent into insults, and I made no move for some time. Finally, however, the shock dwindled and I remembered Holmes's earlier words: _"I would like to apologize in advance for the way I may inadvertently act towards you." _

I was ashamed at myself for not noticing it earlier: Holmes's mood was swinging into irritability, and it was not his fault, but the cocaine's. I tried to soothe him.

"You may have a point, my friend, but I do try my best. We are not all blessed with such analytical skills as you."

"Even if I had the analytical skills of a pea I would still be able to best you, Watson," Holmes asserted with the utmost callousness, and I was hurt by his words, even though I did my best to remind myself of their true source. I resolved to be quiet and finish the game in silence.

My mind had wandered so from the game that Holmes won once again, though if I had been paying attention, the outcome may have been different. Such was my skill- such was Holmes's handicap. I shook my head and put the board away as the night drew on, and it was with mixed feelings I ticked off another day in my journal.

**A/N: Yes, I totally borrowed the hand-in-acid concept from the House episode "Detox." It's practically canon anyways, since House is based off of Sherlock Holmes! And I can so imagine him doing it. BTW, I have no idea when the next chapter will come. Probably in the new year sometime, but hey, you might get lucky and I will end up working on it over holiday break. :) In the meantime, thanks for reading! **


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